The big thaw – For years, US Navy scientists have been the envy of their poorer civilian
cousins. Now the caring, sharing Pentagon is unlocking some of its most closely
guarded secrets

By Vincent Kiernan

THE Cold War is over. The nuclear threat has faded. And with a shortage of
enemies to play underwater hide-and-seek with, America’s admirals can lie back,
relax and think about what they can do for science. For while America’s military
men have had access to advanced technologies that provide them with vast amounts
of information about the oceans, civilian scientists have only ever been able to
dream of getting their hands on such technology. Now the fog of secrecy is
clearing and eager marine scientists are queueing up to ask for a look in the US
Navy’s storehouses of oceanographic data.

In the past, such requests would have been greeted with stony silence. But
the US Navy is beginning to unbend—and unwrap a few of its best kept
secrets. Both civilian and naval scientists agree that the new openness should
help to improve scientific understanding of the oceans and important phenomena
that are intimately linked to it, such as global warming.

This is no small concession: observations of the oceans are some of the most
highly classified of the US military’s secrets. Almost since the beginning of
the Cold War, the US relied on the sea as a hiding place for much of its nuclear
arsenal. At the same time, the US wanted to be able to find Soviet submarines
that were hiding in the depths. Routine measurements of physical conditions in
the ocean, the water’s density, temperature or salinity, for example, were
crucial in discovering how well the water would transmit sound and so for
interpreting the noises made by enemy submarines. Detailed observations of …

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